In mid-December, twin discs will begin glowing blue on the underside of a minibus-sized spacecraft in deep space. At that moment Europe and Japan’s BepiColombo mission will have just come a crucial step closer to Mercury.

Access to space was in the spotlight at this week's Φ event which followed an ESA-hosted workshop on Europe’s emerging microlaunch services held in Paris, France for industry, investors and institutions.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a High-Altitude Pseudo-Satellite (HAPS) — an uncrewed airship, plane or balloon watching over Earth from the stratosphere. Operating like satellites but from closer to Earth, HAPS are the ‘missing link’ between drones flying close to Earth’s surface and satellites orbiting in space.

The ‘fit check’ is that moment in a launch campaign when a satellite is first attached to the launcher adapter that will cradle it on its flight to orbit. This is supposed to be a mere formality, but uncertainty is there in its very name: what if these two items, manufactured in different parts of Europe, don’t fit together as planned?

Space engineers and asteroid experts from across Europe and beyond will gather at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin this week to discuss plans for ‘bonus’ science resulting from humankind’s first spacecraft to explore a binary asteroid system – ESA’s proposed Hera planetary defence mission.

Researchers have tested a clever new method of monitoring the impact of solar storms on Earth’s magnetic field, based on harnessing the compass-like magnetometers that space missions used to check their orientation.

It passes over at us at local dawn or dusk: among the most ambitious lasers ever flown in space, shining down to map Earth’s otherwise unknown global wind field. ESA’s Aeolus mission took more than two decades to reach this point. The laser was a key technology: in testing, the intensity of its beam was actually destroying the laser’s optical elements – the mission could not fly until this problem was fixed.

How many trees are there on Earth? ESA’s Biomass mission will perform a global forest survey, harnessing the longest radar wavelength to pierce through woodland canopies. New microwave transistors made with the most promising semiconductor since silicon make this possible – and are now qualified for spaceflight.

There is a lot of space debris floating around our planet. Down on Earth, we hardly notice. To raise awareness, Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde has created his Space Waste Lab, including a spectacular laser light installation, on display at KAF in Almere from this Friday, 5 October.

From Lego-style satellites that plug together to robot avatars for lunar exploration, satellite maps for Arctic navigation to a DNA-analysing 'tricorder': next week 24 of planet Earth's top start-ups will showcase their cutting-edge ideas for space and beyond at the International Astronautical Congress in Germany.